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Friday, February 14, 2014

Of
the many activities of the modern State, geopolitics lies perhaps
furthest away from the interests of the general public. The reasons
for this have to do with the problematic nature of geopolitics. It
might not have escaped those with a keen interest in the
subject, that geopolitical
discourse usually conflates
considerationsthatshould reallybe kept
apart. There
are two ways this happens:
first, inthe
lack of distinction between means and ends, and second,
in the
lack of distinction between state and people. As a result of
these two all-too-common
amalgamations,
geopolitical analysisoften lacks
the right perspective.

The
first point relates to the fact that geopolitics is concerned not
only with the strategic interests of nations but also with the ways
in which these interests can be tactically achieved. There is seldom
enough appreciation in geopolitical thinking, for the fundamental
differences between strategy and tactics; that is, between
geopolitical interests and the realisation of these geopolitical
interests. Questions related to “what?” and questions related to
“how?” require two different approaches in geopolitics; not least
since the latter, not the former, can lead to government action.
Though it is true that to
some extent ends and means cannot be entirely separated from
each other because they influence one another,
this distinction between the interests themselves
and their realisation should still be made in
geopolitics. Semantics are of course very
important in this regard. For
instance, the use of the terms
“goals”
and “objectives” in
connection with a geopolitical
strategy should perhaps be
avoided because these terms already contain
a certain idea of execution.
A better term to use is
“interests,”
which has a more passive
connotation; it does not imply any form of
action.

The
second point is that geopolitics often conflates the interests of the
government with the interests of the population. In reality, there is
fundamental difference between the two, even in the so-called
“liberal democracies.” Experts in geopolitics and specialists in
international relations, whether they are public servants, whether
they belong to think tanks, or whether they are members of academia,
either fail to recognise, or tend to disregard, this divergence of
interests between the state and the people. Geopolitical analysis is
usually based on the assumption that the interests of the “nation”
are the interests of the country's political and financial
decision-makers. This is not only a problem of semantics; such a
position is problematic, to say the least, in a political system that
calls itself representative.

It
is necessary to develop these points; this will be done in the next
posts. First, both geopolitical interests and their realisation will be reviewed in detail. After that, the distinction between the
interests of the state and the interests of the people will be
discussed in more depth in another post. It will then be possible to draw a general conclusion about the problematic nature of
geopolitics, and finally, the example of “Eurasia” will be looked
at through the methodological lens that has thus been constructed.